


Libations

by unveiled



Series: Snippets [7]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Food, Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-18
Updated: 2012-07-18
Packaged: 2017-11-10 06:27:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/463218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unveiled/pseuds/unveiled
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The present is another country.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Libations

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ninemoons42](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/gifts).



> For ninemoons42, who asked for Charles and Erik on a picnic. Uh, it’s not _quite_ a picnic, but close enough! This story is set immediately after Charles takes a spin in Cerebro for the first time in XMFC. Originally posted [at my Tumblr](http://thoughtsnotunveiled.tumblr.com/post/27509931795/for-ninemoons42-who-asked-for-charles-and-erik-on).

Erik’s skin hums with hot metal and ozone, the smell of the air around Cerebro. The torpid heat outside the transmitter dome is of little relief. He sits at the low wall marking off the uninspired flower beds. CIA-issue, plants he hasn’t learned to recognise. There’s an itch between his shoulder blades, where he feels the presence of the machine.

He tugs down the sleeves of his turtleneck. The fibres crawl on his skin, like wires snaking into his arteries and tracing lines to his heart. The sun is too bright. Erik pulls his shirt away from his body. His mouth is dry. He swallows, and a hollowness drops from his throat to sink deep in his belly.

Charles rustles when he walks — too loud, even if the shape of his watch hasn’t announced his presence. He drops down to sit beside Erik, carrying a thermos flask and two paper-wrapped packets in his hands.

Erik expects Charles to say something, anything, but he lets the space between them fill with silence. Charles hands one of the packets to Erik. It’s a sandwich: egg and lettuce. He unwraps the other one and bites into it — another sandwich, identical to Erik’s. A sharing, then, not charity. Erik watches Charles’s teeth cut neatly into the bread, the morsel disappearing between his lips, then lifts the meal to his own mouth.

The bread slices still have crusts on them, unlike the sandwiches he has had in the cafeteria of the facility. He feels a savage spike of anger — how wasteful this country is, to throw away perfectly good food. Erik braces himself for the cloying sweetness of mayonnaise, but Charles has persuaded someone into leaving the eggs plain, with only onions and salt for flavour. The lettuce is a welcome resistance against his teeth. Nothing will save the pappy bread, though, rapidly going soggy in his hands. He wonders if the flour in the bread has been mixed with chalk. He hates it — he’s allowed to hate food now.

Charles is done. He dusts off his hands and picks at the crumbs on his trousers, tossing them at an attentive sparrow. He pours out the contents of the flask — tea, fragrant and malty — into the drinking lid and gives it to Erik. Charles isn’t smiling, but the softness of his mouth hints at one just coming around the corner.

Erik is struck, suddenly, by a vision of the future: this single moment mirrored in innumerable mutants, the ones yet encountered, yet to know others of their kind. The riches of knowledge and revelation they are yet to have. He takes the cup from Charles’s hands and drinks deep, finishing every drop.

  



End file.
